Some fantastic footage of the impressive operation

15:23, 28 Mar 2026Updated 19:31, 28 Mar 2026

The cranes leaving Cork Harbour(Image: DroneHawk)

One of Cork’s most impressive exports was shipped out of Leeside today, with early-brid onlookers gathering to watch the impressively sized shore-to-ship cranes sail off towards Europe, where they’ll be used to move heavy cargo in the continent’s shipyards.

The marvel of Munster engineering departed from the Cork Dockyard early this morning, carried across the sea aboard a specialised transport ship that’s now en route to Hamburg. The sheer scale of the operation was impressive to behold, but only the early risers got to see the ships leave port this morning.

The transport ship, the Zhong Ren 121, departed from the Port of Cork at around 7 am this morning, with the three cranes aboard. The Chinese transport ship is a marvel of engineering in its own right, measuring 169m long and 40m wide with enough power to carry up to 26,321 tonnes.

For those who didn’t fancy an early start on a Saturday morning, one of Cork’s most well-known drone photographers, DroneHawk, was on the scene to capture the massive operation. His drone captured some absolutely stunning up-close footage of the ship as it sailed across the harbour, and you can find it for yourself down below.

At their full height, the cranes are more than twice as tall as the Elysian, with the steel behemoths measuring in at over 160m. They were assembled in their transport configuration at the Cork Dockyard after being manufactured by Liebherr in Killarney. The cranes were put together in a transport configuration, and the final assembly in Hamburg will see them raised to their full height.

Liebherr is known worldwide for its expertise in designing and manufacturing these enormous structures, with the company’s cranes lifting countless tonnes of cargo at shipyards across Europe, the US and the Caribbean.

As you might expect, such cranes don’t come cheap and while there are no precise figures available for this batch of cranes, a similar project back in 2017 was priced at over €30m, so it’s understood that the order is comfortably in the eight-figure range.